Pages

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Cleaning the Garage

Yesterday it was nice out (today it is rainy, but still warm), so I tackled a project that gets neglected too often - the garage. We have a one-car garage. Okay, I'll be perfectly honest - we have a no-car garage - though there was a time, before we had kids, that my husband's old Mustang actually fit in the garage, but the Mustang is gone and so are those days.

I organized the shovels and tools in one corner and the pogo sticks and stilts, I put the baseball stuf in the baseball bag, the tennis stuff in the tennis bag, the hockey stuff in the hockey bag, piled small play equipment in the wagon and swept some of the accumulated debris out. Already it was starting to look better.

Then I looked at the shelves. I don't think those shelves have ever been organized. They become a catch-all spot for all sorts of bizarre things. And most of those things have something to do with my husband - so I can't just go throw stuff away; he needs to do it.

Now, let me just say, my husband does not like to throw things away. I'm not saying he's a pack rat or anything, but, he kind of is (hence the several old computers in our basement).

Whenever I've worked on the garage before my husband has not been home, and the shelves have not gotten their appropriate going over. Yesterday however he was home.

I directed him to the shelves. He agreed there were shelves. And they had things on them. I explained I wanted some of the things off! Some progress was definitely made. We got rid of several empty packages for things; and old door knob, bolts to hold a toilet in place, and he even let me throw away the electric drill that has been sitting on the shelf for ten years in two pieces, with all it's insides exposed. (Yay! That was quite a coup!)

And then there were the bicycle parts. "What are these," I asked.

"Bicycle parts, they connect the handle bars to the body," was the answer.

I thought that over and looked at the six bicycles in our garage. "All our bicycles have their handlebars connected. Why do we have these?"

"They're for a different bicycle."

"Are we ever likely to buy a bicycle that does not have it's handlebar connected?"

I was able to convince him to throw them out. But he kept a bunch of other bicycle parts (I think we could assemble almost a whole bicycle from the parts on the shelves).

And that was as far as we got yesterday. Next I have to work on him to throw out the two Pioneer car radios that don't fit in either of our cars, that are unlikely to fit in any car we will buy in the future, and have tape players which are becoming less essential to music listening with every passing year. But that's a job for another day.